“What little things!” says Nina, opening her eyes wide and going off into a joyous laugh.  “They are like mice!”

“One, two, three,” Vanya counts.  “Three kittens.  So there is one for you, one for me, and one for somebody else, too.”

“Murrm . . . murrm . . .” purrs the mother, flattered by their attention.  “Murrm.”

After gazing at the kittens, the children take them from under the cat, and begin squeezing them in their hands, then, not satisfied with this, they put them in the skirts of their nightgowns, and run into the other rooms.

“Mamma, the cat has got pups!” they shout.

Mamma is sitting in the drawing-room with some unknown gentleman.  Seeing the children unwashed, undressed, with their nightgowns held up high, she is embarrassed, and looks at them severely.

“Let your nightgowns down, disgraceful children,” she says.  “Go out of the room, or I will punish you.”

But the children do not notice either mamma’s threats or the presence of a stranger.  They put the kittens down on the carpet, and go off into deafening squeals.  The mother walks round them, mewing imploringly.  When, a little afterwards, the children are dragged off to the nursery, dressed, made to say their prayers, and given their breakfast, they are full of a passionate desire to get away from these prosaic duties as quickly as possible, and to run to the kitchen again.

Their habitual pursuits and games are thrown completely into the background.

The kittens throw everything into the shade by making their appearance in the world, and supply the great sensation of the day.  If Nina or Vanya had been offered forty pounds of sweets or ten thousand kopecks for each kitten, they would have rejected such a barter without the slightest hesitation.  In spite of the heated protests of the nurse and the cook, the children persist in sitting by the cat’s box in the kitchen, busy with the kittens till dinner-time.  Their faces are earnest and concentrated and express anxiety.  They are worried not so much by the present as by the future of the kittens.  They decide that one kitten shall remain at home with the old cat to be a comfort to her mother, while the second shall go to their summer villa, and the third shall live in the cellar, where there are ever so many rats.

“But why don’t they look at us?” Nina wondered.  “Their eyes are blind like the beggars’.”

Vanya, too, is perturbed by this question.  He tries to open one kitten’s eyes, and spends a long time puffing and breathing hard over it, but his operation is unsuccessful.  They are a good deal troubled, too, by the circumstance that the kittens obstinately refuse the milk and the meat that is offered to them.  Everything that is put before their little noses is eaten by their grey mamma.

“Let’s build the kittens little houses,” Vanya suggests.  “They shall live in different houses, and the cat shall come and pay them visits. . . .”